Brian was a mathematician. He loved to pontificate on all kinds of nonsense like how many infinities can dance on the head of a pin. When George, an astronomer, asked him for advice Brian was confident he could dial up more elegant advice than George’s empirical predisposition could handle.
What George wanted to know, however, was why were the research schedules of the space and terrestrial telescopes suddenly put on hold to gather data on specific dense regions within three parsecs of Sagittarius A*? Before Brian’s speculations found words, reports came in of the appearance of unrecognized stars whose light had just passed through the gravitational potential near the Milky Way’s center of mass.
Brian thought to himself that this ominously felt like the beginning of the end, and he was right, but his worldview blinded him from seeing just what was ending.
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Denise offers the prompt word “dial” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Story.
Seemingly unprovoked and coming from who-knows-where, certainly not from him, George heard the words enunciate through his mind: Don’t let the devil run your mouth.
“How do I know you’re not the devil giving me that advice?” George countered in self-defense.
Why would the devil give you such advice?
A swirl of confusion funneled through George’s mind reaching down to his heart where it came to rest like soft vanilla ice cream filling a generous cone. When he saw the topping dipped in melted chocolate and offered to him, he didn’t know how to respond to this unexpected kindness, indeed uncalled-for kindness given everything he had done, except to regret pretty much—no—he regretted every wacky thing he ever said.
“Ok,” George cried through tears of joy, “I’ll keep my mouth shut unless it be in praise of You.”
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Denise offers the prompt word “swirl” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Story.
Job 42:1-9 KJV 1 Then Job answered the LORD, and said, 2 I know that thou canst do every thing, and that no thought can be withholden from thee. 3 Who is he that hideth counsel without knowledge? therefore have I uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not. 4 Hear, I beseech thee, and I will speak: I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me. 5 I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. 6 Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes. 7 And it was so, that after the LORD had spoken these words unto Job, the LORD said to Eliphaz the Temanite, My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends: for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath. 8 Therefore take unto you now seven bullocks and seven rams, and go to my servant Job, and offer up for yourselves a burnt offering; and my servant Job shall pray for you: for him will I accept: lest I deal with you after your folly, in that ye have not spoken of me the thing which is right, like my servant Job. 9 So Eliphaz the Temanite and Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite went, and did according as the LORD commanded them: the LORD also accepted Job.
From the platform provided by the Kaibab Plateau George looked down into the Grand Canyon. He saw the water-deposited sedimentation layers on the canyon’s opposite side. He looked deep into the canyon where he saw the Colorado River flowing at the base of a relatively tiny channel it had eroded away.
George realized that no mere river could have eroded such a gorge in the earth after smoothing the huge planation region upon which he stood. Initially he thought some lake or sea must have burst its dam over 50 million years ago, but given erosion rates nothing that old would still be here for him to see.
Then he wondered: maybe, just maybe, some kid in his basement, with nothing better to do, instantiated a simulation of him, his memories and his sensations of this whole canyon riddled plateau, because in George’s stony heart that nonsense would be more tolerable than acknowledging what actually happened.
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Denise offers the prompt word “platform” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.
Genesis 8:1-3 KJV 1 And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters asswaged; 2 The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained; 3 And the waters returned from off the earth continually: and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated.
When the scientist complained that just about everything he knew to be true was not, he heard his mind sing, “When the truth is found—duh-duh—to be-e-e-e-e lies!”
“I only said that it wasn’t true, not that it was a lie,” the scientist corrected his mind.
“Sorry,” his mind replied, “but you do know that it was a lie, don’t you?“
“Lie, schmie, who cares?”
“You do, but apparently you don’t know it yet.”
What the scientist did know was this interchange with whatever it was he kept calling his “mind” could go on and on—and on—and on and on and on and on and on and so he put an end to it by saying, “And with that we move on to the confused conclusion of the last sentence of our story.”
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Denise offers the prompt word “move” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.
Alice wandered through the weeds crediting strange flowers as a source of strength. Regardless, and in spite of appearances, she also trusted that miraculous Light she had grown to long for Who guided her with His caressing warmth and His disciplining heart every time she strayed.
Given all the detours and deceptions she had entertained, as she approached her journey’s end she wondered how she would be received. Would anyone be there to greet her whom she knew over the years? How many allowed themselves to be caught in the quicksand having grown faint along the way?
When Alice finally arrived she found everyone she could now remember waiting for her rejoicing that even she, indeed miraculously even they, made it home.
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Denise offers the prompt word “faint” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.
Isaiah 40:31 But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.
Stan entered a used bookstore offering the antique dreams of the late 20th century. Since he remembered the late 20th century he could see his younger self admiring, like Alice chasing the White Rabbit, many of the titles when they were newer, but he wondered why anyone would now.
As he walked the aisles he paused at the Philosophy section bookended between Marxism and New Age Metaphysics like a triple engagement leading to a bizarre wedding. He wondered why philosophy would want to be associated with those wacky mistresses, but then it occurred to him, in spite of his own wacky fascination with it, that that was right where it belonged.
Stan wondered if the best way to keep the Lord from laughing at him was to only fall down those narrow rabbit holes that the Lord Himself offered. Then he could rejoice in the Lord’s wide mercy to quickly catch him rather than let him make a mess of things first.
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Denise offers the prompt word “engagement” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.
Colossians 2:8 KJV Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.
Gloria listened to a girl telling her about Jesus in the nursing home. The girl reminded her of her daughter when her daughter was much, much younger and acted more like an angel than Gloria liked to remember her daughter acting today.
The girl told the staff that she was sent there to visit only those nearest the ends of their lives and so a nursing assistant escorted her to Gloria who could no longer speak, but acknowledged others by moving her fingers. Although Gloria repeatedly rejected her own daughter, the girl’s words moved Gloria to lift her hand which the girl held in hers.
The next morning Gloria died and her daughter stopped by to pick up her belongings. Upon hearing of her mother’s last visitor, the dam safeguarding decades of tears collapsed.
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Denise offers the prompt word “lift” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.
While Daniel walked the loop around the pond he said to himself, When you see that the voice is not your own and you start doing what ‘it’ tells you to do, even when you know you’ll look stupid if you do, things start happening.
After some steps he continued, When the light finally turns on, you are shocked to realize that this ‘it’ was a ‘he’ all along.
Later, halfway through the loop, Daniel said, Then the ‘he’ gets capitalized and you’re in a relationship you would have thought was nutty only a few years ago.
Then Daniel, feeling he needed to answer some fictional objector walking by his side, said, Of course, there are those who’d claim that they could easily explain all of this away as simply me talking to myself, but it’s also not that hard to come up with explanations that explain away why they like to explain away stuff.
Daniel then addressed a more aggressive, but still fictional, manipulator by asserting, To those who insist I cast Him out as if He were some demon or go to a hell of their own choosing…well, I have no intention of doing either.
By this time Daniel was back at his condo where he paused to conclude, When worry becomes synonymous with silliness and there’s a river of joy waiting to overflow where ever you go, whatever you need will be given to you.
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Denise offers the prompt word “light” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Story.
Poetry, Short Prose and Walking 